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Should freedom of mobility, privacy, commerce, and civil liberties, including assembly and religion, be put on hold or suspended in the name of public health, security?
1-Governors issuing “orders” requiring citizens stay home.
2-Governors determine a) there’s such a thing as essential and non-essential businesses, b) actually assigning businesses to these categories.
3-Absurdity of pet, marijuana, liquor stores, and abortion clinics considered essential while churches are non-essential.
4-Mayors threatening churchgoers with fines and directing police to record the vehicle licenses of anyone attending a drive-in church service.
5-County officials mandating churches not include singing in live stream programs.
6-Some state and local police monitoring and stopping drivers to “check their papers” vis-a-vis essential activities, while other state and local police refuse to enforce governors’ similar orders.
7-Police empowered to break up gatherings of more than three people.
8-Attorneys General, Mayors encouraging people to report neighbors to authorities if they’re seen working at non-essential businesses or violating stay at home orders, with some mayors offering rewards for “snitching,” and 911 lines being flooded with non-emergency calls.
9-County officials requiring people wear government-issued pink arm-bands indicating they’re local and have been quarantined 14 days in order to shop at grocery stores.
10-Some states trying to block people entering from other states, and some states saying their residents are prohibited from leaving.
11-Smart phone data analyzed (surveilled) to determine personal movements.
12-Big social media corporations providing (and mining) personal data, even if “anonymized,” in the name of “public service” while advancing their profit interests at the expense of privacy.
13-The US Department of Justice requesting Congress give it authority to allow judges to delay trials and detain people indefinitely during "emergencies."
All of these things are happening in the United States in the name of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this overreach, unconstitutional, and unnecessary action. While a health crisis is important, it is short-term. Trading away civil liberties is a long-term, enormously significant concern.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has issued two stay at home executive orders, March 23, 2020, and April 9, 2020, in an effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
“As of Saturday, Michigan had nearly 24,000 cases of COVID-19 with close to 1,400 deaths. The state has the third highest number of cases in the country, behind New York and New Jersey. However, about 78% of the confirmed cases are in the three-county Metro Detroit region and some counties have yet to see any coronavirus patients.”
No government official, including me if I were one, is omniscient, so no essential/non-essential policy can be written that’s not laced with inequities and eventual collateral damage. This has always been the problem with planned economies and why the free market should be trusted to let people determine by their buying habits what is non-essential. By the way, a business deemed non-essential by government is essential to the ones who own it or who work there.
This comment does not mean I’m against social distancing or even shelter in place. I’m only raising a serious political question about how liberty and economy work that isn’t getting much consideration other than by a few libertarians.
I also don’t think Governor Whitmer is acting in some horrible way designed to grab power or hurt religious institutions or businesses. Nor do I buy-in to conspiracy theories. I categorically reject and do not endorse attacks on her, or any person, that use insulting language and demeaning caricatures (including coming from the U.S. President). I do, however, question her and several other governors’ broad stay home executive orders that I believe are unnecessary overreach.
It’s an age-old question of liberty vs. security. What are you willing to give up in the way of freedom to be or feel secure? And who makes you secure? And who governs/limits any government that offers security in exchange for fewer liberties?
No, I don’t think the current political context amounts to some socialist plot. But I do believe I understand a bit about human nature and history, and trading of on long-term civil liberties to secure an uncertain short-term security from an illness is a dangerous game.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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Politics 101: Why do candidates run in presidential primaries, and continue to run, when they have no chance of winning?
1-You never know, e.g., Jimmy Who? or the Comeback Kid Bill Clinton or the skinny kid with a funny name Barack Obama.
2-You become famous by developing name recognition, e.g., Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer.
3-You position yourself for higher political office or future campaigns, e.g., HW Bush, Joe Biden, Ben Carson.
4-You position yourself for higher income jobs, increased speaker fees, e.g., Mike Huckabee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
5-You’re described in media the rest of your life as “former presidential candidate,” e.g., Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, et al.
6-It’s fun, you travel around treated as royalty, media follows you, e.g., Herman Caine, Carly Fiorina.
7-You keep your issue in the news, e.g., Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson.
8-Egos and Logos, e.g., Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg.
9-Money, Sex, and Power, or what Scripture calls Lust of the Eyes, Lust of the Flesh, and Pride of Life, e.g., John Edwards, Gary Hart, and enough others to run the alphabet.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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A 2:08 min video I recently recorded with Manna Media, considering the way people argue on social media that their political or partisan views are righteous, all others are ipso facto unrighteous, and God clearly favors their view exclusively.
This one will probably get me in trouble, and that's OK, but if you argue otherwise the burden of proof is on you.
In Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address near the close of the Civil War, he said, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained...Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other...The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2019
*This video may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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It’s become commonplace for people who don't like a speaker or a public discussion in some other public forum to demonstrate their displeasure by disrupting the meeting or hearings or proceedings or event with the apparent goal of preventing, silencing, i.e., not allowing the other side to be heard.
Some are now arguing this is their “right,” and that it is good and proper to silence opposing points of view. We hear this argument on both the Left and the Right.
This is a dangerous trend. It suppresses the First Amendment, and it is not what a free country is about - again, whether one likes or supports the speaker, or the points being shared.
Let’s take a moment for a much-needed Civics 101 lesson.
1—Is protest legal in the US? Yes, in this free country it is, as long as the protest is peaceful and nonviolent, i.e. not harming people, others’ property, impeding people’s progress on public thoroughfares, or otherwise creating a threat to public safety.
2—Do I have to agree with protesters to agree with their freedom to protest? No.
3—Should protestors (or speakers) with whom I disagree be silenced? No, this idea and now increasingly common tactic is at fundamental odds with the constitutional principle of freedom of speech or expression.
4—If the point of protest is to draw attention to something considered troublesome, isn’t it logical that the more outrageous the protest the more likely it will elicit response? Yes and No. Yes, outrageous is OK, as long as it fits within #1. No, outrageous may backfire on protesters, eliciting not a response to their views but to their methods.
5—Is protest “bad”? No, not really. It is part of what it means to live in a free, open, pluralistic, and democratic society.
6—Do American citizens have the “right” to protest anywhere, anytime, for any reason? Yes and No. Yes, as long as it fits in #1. No, if it violates #1, and No, in that protest is not ipso facto a right in private or even public places because along with a "right" comes "responsibility."
There seems to be an entire generation or more of the American public who evidence little knowledge of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or case law about fundamentals of a free society. They’ve grown up or are growing up with no instruction, or if they were taught about civics they were taught with a bias. What’s scary about this is that older political leaders, many of whom know better and who do understand the fundamentals of our free society, are going along with or encouraging this new view because they think it translates to political power for their Party or viewpoints. Some of them, particularly on the Left, are arguing the US Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights be revised or even thrown out and rewritten.
This is also threatening, trading principle and proven, reasoned and reasonable process for power.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2019
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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Let’s talk 2020 presidential election realpolitik in a nonpartisan, non-ideological way, meaning no endorsements stated or implied.
1—President Trump is very good at being who he is, whether you or I like that fact, like him, or not.
2—If President Trump is breathing, he’s going to run again in 2020.
3—If Democrats want to win the White House, they must choose wisely, meaning Democrat candidates, or most certainly the Democrat nominee,
--Must be as good at being who he/she is as President Trump,
--Must have uber-thick skin,
--Must have off-the-charts communication skills, and
--Must have an actual set of new, worthy, better-future ideas that can be shared in 3-4 sound bites.
4—Candidates Must not try to out-Trump Trump, emulating his style, nor should they simply run as the Anti-Trump.
5—Same goes for any Republican considering challenging President Trump for the Republican nomination.
If you doubt this, ask what happened to the other 16 good, decent, prepared Republican candidates who ran in 2016.
Again, this is not an homage to President Trump. It’s realpolitik. Sentimentality, hubris, unwarranted optimism, “experience” no matter how impressive, are not enough.
If another Republican or Democrat is going to win election in 2020 he/she Must be someone authentically different from and more compelling than President Trump.
Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2019
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attributionstatement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events atwww.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.